Friday, 30 June 2017

The Russia Collusion Story Was Running Out of Steam

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Peter Smith, a Republican opposition researcher who said he was working for Michael Flynn, colluded with Russian hackers to try to obtain stolen emails from Hillary Clinton. The Journal reports that Smith referred to conversations with Flynn in emails with associates, and that U.S. intelligence has evidence of “Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary.” The Trump defense does not inspire a lot of confidence. “A Trump campaign official said that Mr. Smith didn’t work for the campaign,” reports the Journal, “and that if Mr. Flynn coordinated with him in any way, it would have been in his capacity as a private individual.” Obtaining hacked information from Russia for the campaign as a campaign staffer versus doing it as a private individual is a distinction without much difference.

Of course, the notion that there was no evidence of collusion before the Journal report has always been based on a tight definition of what constitutes evidence. It requires assuming that Trump’s on-camera request for Russia to hack Clinton’s emails during the campaign was a joke and that his confidante Roger Stone obtained advance knowledge of the timing of the WikiLeaks publication without any contact from Russia.

This is also not the first evidence of collusion between Russia and other Republican officials in the 2016 campaign. A relatively little-noticed Journal report from May found that Aaron Nevins, a Florida Republican operative, sought and received stolen Democratic voter-turnout files from Guccifer 2.0, a hacker believed by U.S. intelligence to be working for Russia. What’s new is that explicit evidence of collusion may now extend to the Trump campaign itself.

So it was Michael Flynn who’s the alleged link. The continued investigation of Flynn after his resignation led Trump to say to the FBI Director: “I hope you can let this go.” Coincidence? Perhaps, perhaps not. But calling this a “witch hunt” now sounds ridiculous.